By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 17, 1999; Page J01

Amateur photographer Deborah Bush of Southeast Washington recalled her first reaction to the 3-year-old who spoke in February at a Black History Month salute to abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

"I turned to her mom and said, God, she's precious, isn't she?' Her mom said, She really is,' and started laughing."

On Friday, Precious Thomas, who turned 4 Sunday, was posing for pictures and preparing to give part of the keynote address at the Pathways to Freedom dinner at Howard University's Blackburn Center. The dinner honored civil rights leader Rosa Parks on the Washington stop of her sixth summer bus tour tracing the Underground Railroad and the civil rights movement.

Far from practicing her lines, the seasoned young speaker ran the hallway of the Blackburn Center. Her pink tights twisted above satin ballet slippers, and she showed off pink and white teddy-bear barrettes that secured the dozens of twists in her hair.

If you ask her, Precious will count to 10 in Swahili, Japanese, French and Spanish and name the parts of the digestive system. She'll also tell you: "I have a bad bug in my body, and it makes me sick. It attacks my immunity system."

Precious, who was adopted by Rocky and Michael Thomas, of Suitland, when she was a month old, was diagnosed as HIV-positive at age 1 after a bout with pneumonia. Her birth mother was drug-addicted. Rocky Thomas, a homemaker with three other children, said she was stunned.

"I got the news and all I wanted was to be left alone, but, thank goodness, no one did," she said.

Citing support from her neighbors and from New Samaritan Baptist Church, of which she is a lifelong member, Thomas said: "It has meant so much to me to know that they are behind me. If Precious is hospitalized, sometimes the church hospitality club will come sit with her so I can get some rest."

Thomas said Precious was in the hospital constantly in 1992 and 1993 for upper respiratory infections. Although the last 18 months have been better and Precious has had no hospital stays, the medication is constant. So is the monitoring for fevers. "Her T-cells are at 800; that's good," Thomas said, counting white blood cells the way most parents count new teeth.

Doctors and teachers discovered that Precious had a gift for remembering facts and figures. It was then that her mother began a campaign to raise AIDS awareness and started letting Precious do motivational speaking.

Precious has appeared at dozens of functions, including being guest speaker at a World AIDS Day program at the General Services Administration. According to her mother, she is asked to give speeches at church or civil rights benefits every week, and she has shared a Howard University stage with entertainer Lola Falana. Singer Patti Labelle invited Precious backstage at a Warner Theatre concert, and she has been photographed with President Clinton and Vice President Gore, who visited her at Children's Hospital.

"I'm not keeping my mouth closed about her being HIV-positive. . . . You very seldom hear about a child like her, so strong and bright," Thomas said. "It's not about the illness; it's about all the love and affection she gives. She motivates everyone she comes into contact with. The energy is there."

Inside the Blackburn Center ballroom, Precious was carried to the microphone, where she was introduced as someone who had done more talk shows than Jesse L. Jackson. The oohs and aaahs, however, were quickly replaced by stunned silence when it was announced that Precious was HIV-positive.

As the mike was lowered to her height, Precious began speaking in a voice beyond her years: "We are here today to honor a woman who lives for peace. She changed the world . . . by doing one peaceful act of remaining seated when those who knew not peace and had not love would have her to stand."

The charmed audience stood before she finished speaking, and flashbulbs exploded everywhere. Rosa Parks, 82, was helped to her feet, and she smiled delightedly at the child, who curtsied and blew her a kiss.

Parks was a 42-year-old seamstress on Dec. 1, 1955, when she defied a Montgomery, Ala., rule requiring blacks to yield their bus seats to whites. The incident triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus line that resulted in the desegregation of the buses and is considered one of the first acts of the modern civil rights movement.

Precious, who said she wants to be a model, a ballet dancer or a hairstylist, took her proximity to history in stride, waving and smiling for the cameras.

Ella McCall-Haygan, a co-organizer for the Pathways to Freedom program, was responsible for arranging for Precious to speak. "I heard her speak at the Frederick Douglass salute, and I was floored. I got up and gave her a standing ovation. I couldn't stop clapping for that baby."

Her eyes seemed to mist over a little. "She's just so precious," she said.